Greetings and salutations,
I am one of the recently added bloggers here at debtkid.com. This will be an unusually long post, in two parts, because I have a lot of story to tell. I can promise you brevity (or at least an attempt at it) in my future posts.
You all can call me RD. I am a 28 year old living in the Washington DC suburbs. I spent four years in the Marine Corps as an IT geek. I then went to George Mason University using my Montgomery GI bill and working through school. Now I work as a legislative analyst for a health care professional association in Alexandria Virginia.
Life is good
My debt problems started in college. I was actually in a very good financial situation when I started college. I collected my Montgomery GI bill, which is a monthly stipend ($1300ish), and I worked 3/4 to full time depending on the week/month. My job was waiting tables at a very popular restaurant that brought in a minimum of $60 a night and some times upwards of $120. Friday and Saturday nights were a guaranteed $160 or more. I also purchased a house while in college and rented out rooms to other students for a mild profit as well. Life was very good… for a while.
The road down
Here we meet online poker and my downfall. I started slow, experienced some successes and some losses. Eventually I started betting more and more and ended up having drastic swings up (turned $200 into $20k in two days one time, which I then lost a few days later) and a lot of more drastic swings down. Let me tell you, there is nothing that will stroke what was a rapidly developing gambling addiction than to win a whole lot of money and then to lose it. It will only reinforce the idea that you can win it all back and more. The emotional roller coaster associated with poker was INTENSE. The rush of a great night and good hands, the disparate need to get more money and get even when I was down. Eventually, I racked up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt from playing poker. I believe is was about $25k, but I could not tell you for sure because I was in total denial about how much I was losing. Over the coarse of the first year that this happened the housing bubble artificially inflated the price of my home by 25%. I refinanced some of the debt into the house AND then took out a home equity loan to pay off credit card debts. At the time I told myself that I would get a fresh start and never play poker again. When my house refinanced I literally was maxed out on my cards and was watching every single dollar in my bank account. I had no room to maneuver at all, thankfully I did not have any emergencies pop up during that time, my house of cards would have crumbled.
Unfortunately, I did not learn my lesson, and with my credit cards clear I eventually found my way back to poker. Oh, this was not constant. I knew I had a problem and would quit, then start again, and quit again. Constantly berating myself for my weakness and letting myself get caught up in it again each time.
The Price Tag for poor decisions
I did finally kick poker. In the end I was looking at about $20k in credit card debt (again…) and a maxed out home equity line of credit ($40k) where about 3/4 of the money on that was to pay off credit card gambling debt. The last $10k was also credit card debt, but that was my wife’s (then fiance) credit card we paid off.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey RD,
Wow, I didn’t realize online gambling could put someone in the hole for that much. I have a very close family member who lives near a casino and there are times that person disappears for a day or so, only to find them at a table, so I understand a little bit of what you went through.
I look forward your posts and hopefully they can help that person as well
Chris
Hi Chris,
Online gambling accounts for about half of the non-mortgage debt that I have. I owe my parents a personal loan of over $50k when they let me borrow the down payment on my first home.
Online gambling… it is far more dangerous that casino gambling in my opinion. Too much to write here (maybe a future article, but it would be slightly off topic), but suffice it to say, there is a major disconnect while you are playing between the money you are losing at the table and the money you are losing in real life.
I’m just glad that online poker is a thing of the past for me. I have much more important things to occupy my time, which you will learn more about in the second part of my introduction…
~RD
I’m glad you’ve got your problem under control for now, and we look forward to hearing about the progress that you’re making!
RD,
Congrats on kicking the habit. Some people close to me have struggled with these addictions and I know it must be terribly painful. Congrats to you for your recovery, and thank you for sharing your hopeful story–you will overcome!! Looking forward to watching you become debt free.
Jess
ouch…. thankfully you were able to get a decent job and a house before all of that…. congrats on kicking the habit, I look forward to hearing how you managed to do that…. your cycle of attachment rings some bells with me though not in relation to an addiction – nice to hear from you and glad it will work out!
Welcome RD.
I have been around the gambling underbelly since I has a teen. The high school hang was the pool hall, then we moved into live poker nights, and then online poker came about. I won big at the home games and never did well in my first stint at online poker. I stopped for a few years and then won a freeroll on FT for $7.75 if I remember correctly. I was able to run that into about $7k in a year or so. I was never one for big swings or huge risks. I never jumped levels until I had more than a couple 100 BBs. I was probably addicted even though I was winning. Then my boys came a long and I knew that poker wasn’t a a way that I wanted to spend a lot of my time.
I cashed out slowly over the few months and haven’t looked back since. On to bigger and better things. The money did help us clear $70k in debt in about 3 years, so it can be done.
The PF community looks forward to hearing more from you.
Hey RD….Glad to hear you were able to recognize what was going on and kick the habit. I look forward to reading more articles from ya and see how you tackle this obstacle.
-CC